wouldn't ripping nepomuk and likewise rarely used but deeply KDE services that tend to bog things down be a more effective way of making kde faster?

Not really. if you disable nepomuk/stirgi then they either become dormant (and use like 5mb of RAM at most but I doubt it) or no longer run I don't recall either but they've become less of a problem than they were when 4.0 first came out. 25% CPU usage all the time some people reported.

@Plan9: I like Kwin just fine. But sometimes I just want something a little faster and less flashy. Hence, I tend to switch between normal KDE and KDE/openbox a lot.

BUT...my problem is it seems that with KDE and openbox installed I no longer have a program list so neither openbox nor KDE think there are programs installed when I try to use a program list like openbox's or KDE's kickoff...and the KDE plugin "programs/applications" for Krunner doesn't work along with no memory of default program associations. So every time I want to open a file I have to give the terminal style name for the program (ie not Writer, but Libreoffice or soffice; not chrome, but google-chrome).

So...does anyone know where KDE and/or openbox store their program list that they read from?

Anyone know why KDE and Openbox don't like each other? Every time I have the two installed on the same system they erase (at least that's the only explanation I have) each other's installed program lists (meaning the programs haven't been touched but both KDE and openbox don't think there are programs installed and thus I have to use a terminal to run programs). This is really annoying because I had an awesome setup using both KDE and openbox for my GUI but the fact that there are no "default programs" for filetypes and I have no working runners or program lists making me have to open up a terminal and then launch things is almost deal breaker. I hate being Murphy's Law incarnate.

@Plan9: I like Kwin just fine. But sometimes I just want something a little faster and less flashy. Hence, I tend to switch between normal KDE and KDE/openbox a lot.

BUT...my problem is it seems that with KDE and openbox installed I no longer have a program list so neither openbox nor KDE think there are programs installed when I try to use a program list like openbox's or KDE's kickoff...and the KDE plugin "programs/applications" for Krunner doesn't work along with no memory of default program associations. So every time I want to open a file I have to give the terminal style name for the program (ie not Writer, but Libreoffice or soffice; not chrome, but google-chrome).

With a clever hack that involves replacing xdg calls to kde-open, you can solve it. I personally find kde-open a lot easier, granular and use-friendly than other methods.

OK...so how do I get the two idiots (KDE and openbox) to play nice? I really have no clue as people seem not to mix the two.

@Plan9: So how can I use that to fix the problem? Gah sometimes Linux makes me want to torture a bacteria.

On a side note the grub with Bodhi's latest release seems to not work with their 64bit version so my plan to try out that instead has failed and now my desktop has no working OS. YAY! I think I'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight or need a straight jacket because of this crap. LOL